I am currently painting a local bed and breakfast for minimum wage (just a little more actually). Interestingly, I am making more per hour more by painting the house than I was as a developer at *******.1

Crazy.

It would be unprofessional to mention the company by name. Given I was salary, and the overtime I was expected to put in, I was making $12/hour ↩

The other day, The Wife and I were in the grocery store. For the most part, I don’t pay attention to prices, but the Wife is pretty value concious. So when she pointed out that chicken was ridiculously expensive, my first reaction was to simply shrug… I don’t know a good price from a bad price. I did happen to glance at the sticker.

$14 for two chicken breasts!

I still don’t have a good idea as to whether that is a good or bad price for meat in the store, but I do know I can get chicken for a lot cheaper than that.

About a month ago, we expanded our chicken flock by 7 birds; we paid about $7 per bird from an advertisement on Kijiji.

Let’s break that down a little: 2 breasts @ $14 , or a whole chicken for $7. For $14 I get 2 breasts; for $7 I get two breasts, two legs, two wings. and a soup carcass.

Now, I imagine that the used layers I get off kijiji aren’t going to weigh quite as much, and aren’t going to be of the same plump variety, but I have to ask about a price disparity like that. How can people afford to eat?

I think I’ll be cruising Kijiji for some more “laying hens” over the next week or so.

Thursday was our weekly run into town to pick up things we didn’t realize we needed until we didn’t have them. Today’s grand purchase, that I am very excited about, was Asbestos Underwear! Ok, so they were fire resistant gloves, I just like the sound of the word Asbestos.

Since December, I have been tending a wood fired furnace to keep our house warm, and not all of the wood is small. This means I either have to chop it up or (if the fire is hot enough) carefully manoeuvre giant logs through a tiny door to gently place the log in just the right place without smashing it through the brick work.

The idea is to burn wood: it’s cheaper. Unfortunately, at some point during the night, when I am not actively tending it, it runs out of fuel and stops producing heat. This is where the Oil comes in. When the wood furnace has run out of fuel and is no longer producing heat, I want the Oil to kick in and heat the place instead. Oil is expensive, so I only want it to kick in if absolutely necessary.

I’m a terrible neighbour. That’s why I bought a huge property, it puts a little bit of a buffer between me and my neighbours. So having some squatter come along and start building a home right next to my home really makes me angry. I’ve invested a lot in ensuring there is a buffer between me an my neighbours, and having some ne’er-do-well plunk himself down like he owns the joint just isn’t right.

Yesterday, while gathering wood from the woodshed, I discovered a squatter. This jerk had put together a little shanty hut from my firewood, not only does he use my firewood to build his house, but he had the gall to start telling me off for tearing down his home. Continue reading Evicting Squatters→

A couple of days ago, we had a snow storm. The snow is waste deep; it’s going to rain tonight; and some dough-head put all the firewood in the barn. I just spent the entire afternoon digging out a trail from the barn to the basement. Suddenly, the reality of managing this much snow becomes crystal clear.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to dig out this trail of mine, and the novelty of it is starting to wear a little thin. After having spent the entire afternoon moving the snow, I’ve learned a few things about moving snow.

For those interested, I recently added profiles for our two pets: Chimutisk, and Stew.

Before we left Calgary, I wrote about being grateful for having healthy pets. After watching the animals for the last couple of weeks, Sharon and I were musing that its nice that they are happy too. Continue reading Happy Pets = Unhappy Me→

Before we made the move to Nova Scotia, we did a lot of research about how people felt about living in Nova Scotia. One source of information came from the guys at DownShiftMe.com. When we arrived in Nova Scotia, and needed a Real Estate Agent, we decided to send them an email and see if they could recommend one. In the end, they couldn’t (their’s had moved) but we met with them for coffee.

This past weekend Matt and Adrian came over to our house for a visit. We have been to their house before, and they have been here, but this was the first time we were really set up for entertaining. We sat around all afternoon (and a little into the evening) talking about this and that and generally just having a good time. Being able to host some guests, really made the place feel like home. Continue reading Visitors and Eggs→

As with any new undertaking, you find there are those stupid little details that nobody bothers to mention because they are so blindingly obvious to someone who is in the know. Living in the country is no different. We have been living in the country for exactly one week and there are a thousand little things that I am finding would make life far more comfortable but would never make anyone’s list of necessities. Continue reading Stupid Little Necessities→